The Lecturer in Quantum Operations
by Ophelia Salt
Summary: The Disc's second female wizard arrives to take a teaching post alongside Ponder Stibbons at Unseen University. Intrigue, adventure and possible romance ensue. "T" rating for later chapters. Warning: Contains generous amounts of quantum.  IN PROGRESS
1. Chapter 1

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story is in progress and updated somewhat regularly... Hopefully you'll enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it. I've tried to stick as close to canon as possible (obviously, I've had to bend and/or break it in some places), and when it's finished I'll post a chapter of notes at the end to share my references. Read on, please review, and enjoy!

* * *

><p>For once, Ponder Stibbons hadn't had to handle the paperwork. The Archchancellor had hired new faculty entirely without help, going so far as to quickly close and lock his office door when Ponder came knocking. Such behavior was extremely unusual for Ridcully, who typically couldn't be bothered with anything that involved paperwork, signatures or a conversation more than five minutes long and not having anything to do with trout.<p>

Ponder was nervous. He shifted from one foot to the other as he glanced around the Great Hall of Unseen University, noting similar discomfort among his fellow wizards. The old men didn't care for change, and the introduction of a new faculty member would be sure to disrupt their carefully crafted routines of sleeping, eating, and the avoidance of anything that could be considered work. One more mouth at the dinner table meant that many mouthfuls unavailable to the rest of the faculty, one less cigar in the community cigar box, the disruption of their traditionally nonexistent class schedules.

Ridcully appeared out of nowhere, clapping a hand on Ponder's shoulder hard enough to make him stumble. "Stibbons! Look at this, will you!" With his free hand, he gestured to the assembled faculty.

"Yes, sir."

Ridcully hooked his thumbs underneath his suspenders and gave them a satisfying snap. "Quite the display of wizardly unity, ain't it?"

Ponder had never seen a less unified assortment of people in his life. Wizards, as a general rule, did not unify. Everyone in the Hall was fidgeting, whispering rumors into the ear of whoever happened to be next to them. The wizards would be glad when the event was over.

The Archchancellor shoved past Ponder, heading towards the center of the head table, where he pounded one giant fist and loudly demanded silence. He kept going until the wizards got the idea.

"Brothers!" Began Ridcully, which Ponder thought was strange, as the fraternity of wizards was not really all that brotherly. "Today we welcome a new member of our faculty into the, er, bosom of the University, as it were."

This introduction was followed by a long, wordy speech that Ponder didn't really bother to listen to. It sounded as though Ridcully had taken it directly from a book, as Ponder was sure the Archchancellor didn't know the meaning of some of the longer words. Instead of listening, Ponder observed the wizards. None of them were listening, either, and had continued their restless behavior, the low murmur of gossip buzzing around the corners of the room.

It wasn't until Ridcully's speech reached a deafening crescendo in Ponder's ear that he started to pay attention. The massive oaken doors of the Great Hall opened with a crack akin to lightning, slamming the doors back against the wall as a long figure in white robes strode into the chamber. Ponder strained his eyes, fighting to see into the illumination from the entry in the dim room.

Those closer to the door were making noises of outrage, turning to follow the figure through the Hall. The doors closed, and Ponder began to blink the spots out of his eyes. When he was able to see again, he realized why the assembly of wizards was roaring its disapproval.

With a satisfied smirk, Ridcully announced their new brother's name.

"Wizards of Unseen University, I give to you Miss Katarina Smith."

* * *

><p>Ponder could see how this was going to be a problem. He had no doubt that Miss Smith could see it, too.<p>

Regardless, she stood in the center of the Great Hall, back straight, eyes forward, her face remarkably expressionless. Her robes were impeccably white, her pointy hat tilted over one eye. Red hair curled under her chin and down her shoulders in a bloody shock against the white of her robes. Ponder noted that she didn't carry a staff, a move which, on her part, was either brilliant or stupid. While the traditional staff might have made her seem more wizardly, it also might have caused quite a bit more outrage. Still, Ponder thought, the amount of force with which the Hall doors had opened had to have come from somewhere—she probably had at least a wand stashed away in a pocket.

Miss Smith stood motionless until the uproar had died down. It was by no means quiet, wizards were still grumbling, but it the situation had calmed enough that Ridcully's booming voice could be heard over the crowd.

"Miss Smith."

"Wotcher, Archchancellor." Said Miss Smith, with a wicked grin and a wink. Her voice was strange; Ponder was sure he had heard the accent once before but couldn't place it. Also—_Wotcher_? Awfully informal, thought Ponder. Common. And that smile! The wink! What was happening here?

Ponder was forced to admit to himself that if a woman was going to wink that way at a wizard, it probably _would_ be at Mustrum Ridcully.

"How's old Bill?"

"Keeping busy. University is suffering a bit, blight of roos and all that. He sends his regards."

Ponder blinked. Fourecks, that's where he'd heard the accent! She must be referring to Bill Rincewind (no relation to Unseen's own), the Archchancellor of Bugarup University. Ponder had a brief flash backwards in time to the Unseen faculty's adventure in Fourecks, and shuddered.

What in the Dungeon Dimensions was a blight of roos?

"Gentlemen!" Roared Ridcully, bringing Ponder back to the present. "That is what I expect you to act like around Miss Smith. Some of you have got to be old enough to remember 1966."

This unleashed a new wave of discontent from the assembled faculty.

Ponder noticed Miss Smith casually dip a hand into her pocket. He had been correct about the wand. A brief flick of the hand, and a fireball burst into the air about the congregation's heads. Silence. The wizards of Unseen University hadn't seen a casually-thrown fireball since Ridcully put an unofficial end to the traditional rite of succession.

Ridcully applauded madly. "Well _done_, Miss Smith! I can't shut the buggers up for half that!"

Another smile, a half shrug.

Ridcully turned to holler directly in Ponder's ear. "Stibbons!"

He cringed. "Yes, Archchancellor?"

"Show Miss Smith to her office, will you?"

"I don't know where her office is, sir. Might I remind you that you kept all of this rather, er, secret?"

"I'm sure you'll find it eventually. Off you go!" Ridcully laid one massive hand on Ponder's shoulder and shoved him backwards. Half-falling out of his chair, Ponder stumbled from behind the table and toward Miss Smith, who gave him an appraising look before turning on her heel and striding back toward the door.

The buzz of angry wizards followed them out, silencing only when the heavy doors closed behind them.


	2. Chapter 2

Katarina Smith smoothed her hands down the front of her robe, willing them to stop shaking. She'd known that her entrance into the Great Hall would cause a stir, but she hadn't expected it to be quite so horrific. Apparently, not much had changed in the past forty years at Unseen University, which was exactly why her parents had packed her off to the other side of the Disc. Female wizards, with one—no, it was two, including herself—exceptions, did not happen.

It had been Bill Rincewind, Bugarup U's Archchancellor, who had suggested her move to the continent. He had actually suggested she apply at Braseneck, thinking that the newer university would be more accommodating to the oddity of a female professor. Braseneck, however, had a flaw: its high-energy magic program was headed by Professor Adrian Turnipseed, and thus was only a second-hand mockery of the program at Unseen. Professor Turnipseed was bright enough—she'd read every treatise published on the subject—but he was nothing when compared to Reader of Invisible Writings at Unseen University.

Who was now standing in the corridor behind her. The Ponder Stibbons whose name she'd read carefully stamped under the titles of dissertations on quantum magics had turned into a man who had nearly tripped on his own robes skirting around a table.

_You're only getting what you wished for_, she reminded herself, shoving her trembling hands into her pockets and forcing a smile onto her face. She spun around, intending to introduce herself, when she realized that he already knew who she was—the entire Great Hall knew. Ridcully had told them.

Ponder saved her from having to speak by saying, "I don't actually know where your office is."

She smiled, for real this time. "That's alright, I don't either."

He stuck out a hand, looking uncomfortable. "Ponder Stibbons."

She took it, still smiling, grateful that he might be just as uncomfortable in this situation as she was. "Katarina Smith. But you already knew that."

He gestured down the corridor. "Shall we, er, start looking?"

She nodded, and the pair began walking down the hallway, footsteps echoing on the stone floors. Ponder was oddly quiet. He stood a good head taller than she did, so she was able to subtly study his profile from under her eyelashes. She hadn't been sure what to expect out of Ponder—physically, that was, there was no doubt the man was a genius—except that she somehow thought he'd be older. He was fairly young, in his thirties, maybe, and had the slightly pinched look of someone trying to make sense of something and failing. He wore thick glasses that had slid halfway down his nose and his hair looked like it hadn't been combed in days. The effect wasn't unpleasant, in an academic sort of way.

The silence was becoming awkward as they turned a corner and made their way down a hallway that seemed abandoned. She stopped walking, and when Ponder turned to ask why, she said, "well, aren't you going to ask me?"

He looked at her blankly. "Ask you what?"

She resumed walking. "How I got to be the first female wizard to show up in over forty years?"

"I hadn't thought about it, honestly."

He even _looked_ honest, she thought, although she doubted the thought hadn't crossed his mind. She wondered, briefly, what sort of man Ponder Stibbons was outside of academia, and came up with an incredibly boring answer.

"Are you familiar with the history of this university, Mister Stibbons?" She asked.

He stiffened. "Of course I am, Miss Smith. I happen to be Master of the Traditions… among many _other_ responsibilities," he replied, in a slightly annoyed voice.

She chose to ignore his tone. "Then you _are_ familiar with the statute of 1966?"

Ponder started, blinked twice, and turned to face her. It was obvious that he had just put the pieces together and that, for once, two and two had made four.

"Smith!"

She smiled. "The husband of a witch takes _her_ name."

"Your mother wasn't a witch."

"Half," she shrugged. "Both. Something like that. Dad's never really had an opinion, I don't think."

"Eskarina Smith," he said, slowly, "is your mother."

She nodded.

Ponder's eyes had lit up, and he had moved quite a bit closer to her, examining her. She didn't know what he hoped to find that way, other than that her robes had been bleached a lot and she'd spent a considerable amount of time on her hair that morning.

He was staring at her over the rims of his glasses. "Fascinating," he decided. With that, he'd turned back around and continued walking.

This was not how the game usually went. Questions were generally asked about her father, about where her parents were now, why she was in Fourecks (or, in this case, _from_ Fourecks), things like that. People did not say "fascinating", and continue on their way.

Ponder Stibbons, she decided, was a very strange man.

"So that's it, then," she said, hurring to catch up to him. "It's all quite fascinating, let's move on."

He glanced at her. "You threw a fireball into the ceiling of the Great Hall. Congratulations, you've proved your wizard and you're obviously female. You're also famous, but that doesn't particularly, ah, concern me."

She was becoming annoyed. "Mister Stibbons, how closely do you follow the published literature in your field?"

"Very closely," he responded.

"Well then," she said, stopping and grabbing hold of his sleeve. He turned, a concerned expression on his face, and she let go, embarrassed. She was acting like an imbecile, but his indifference had irritated her. She crossed her arms. "Well then," she repeated, "you've read the papers out of Bugarup."

"Yes."

"And who wrote those papers, Mister Stibbons?"

Ponder, in that moment, proved that he suffered from the same male-dominated thinking as the rest of his colleagues. The look on his face was indescribable, of someone who has not only put together a puzzle but is then completely shocked at the image it reveals.

"K. Smith... is… not… ah, male. Er. It's… you, isn't it?" He said feebly, his face reddening.

She nodded.

"They're, er, they're… very, ah, very good papers, Miss Smith."

She raised an eyebrow.

Ponder examined the floor. "No, really, I thought they were very good papers even when I thought you were, ah, male. Very, ah, thorough. Er. Sorry."

She began walking again, feeling a bit sorry herself. "It's alright, really. I only put my initial on them for a reason… that reason, actually." They walked along in silence for minute before she added, "So, Mister Stibbons, I'm afraid that we'll be working together."

They came to a door at the end of the hallway. "Well, I'm not," he said. "Afraid, that is. There are very few things that could scare me now."

She wasn't sure how to take that comment, so she left it alone. Ponder walked through the door and held it open for her. It opened onto the university green, and she was grateful that her hat kept the sunlight from her eyes. It was late summer, almost fall, only a week before the start of the semester, and the sun was blinding.

Ponder started off toward a low-slung building near the wall surrounding the campus. "Stay on the walkway, it's quicker," he said. "Besides, Modo doesn't like people on the grass."

"Where are we going?"

"High-energy magic building. HEM. I trust you've heard of Hex?"

"The invention of the great Ponder Stibbons?" She laughed. "Of course."

Was it her imagination, or was Ponder standing a bit straighter?

She wasn't quite prepared for her first view of Hex. Truncated diagrams had accompanied the descriptions in Ponder's publishing, but she'd never been able to imagine what the machine looked like as a whole. The first thing she became aware of as she stepped through the door was a steady stream of tinkling sound—the skittering of ants on glass. Her mouth dropped open as she witnessed Hex for the first time, the massive array of glass tubing and miscellaneous objects that took up almost half the room. It was like opening a present at Hogswatch—something that you'd really wanted and vaguely expected, but you didn't know if anyone had actually bought for you.

It was wonderful.

* * *

><p>Ponder stood to the side of the door as Katarina entered the room. She looked like a child who'd just opened the best Hogswatch gift of her life, moving slowly toward the enormous table on which Hex resided with her eyes wide and her mouth slightly open. He watched her duck to examine the ants, sticking her head into gaps between the tubes. She carefully traveled around the table, examining each of the objects in the tubing, occasionally glancing back to an area she'd already scrutinized. He knew what she was doing—tying together loose ends, figuring out what did what, piecing together cause and effect to figure out how Hex worked.<p>

_Good luck_, he said silently. _I've been trying to figure that out for years._

She sat down at the bench in front of Hex's quill, removed her hat, and said quietly, "Hello, you."

A brief scratch of quill on paper produced:

+++HELLO, MISS SMITH.+++

"Know who I am, don't you? Clever boy."

+++I AM NOT A BOY.+++

"Clever machine."

+++THANK YOU.+++

She smiled. "Your friend Mister Stibbons seems to have misplaced my office. Do you know where it is?"

+++UNSEEN UNIVERSITY MAIN BUILDING FLOOR SIX HALLWAY B ROOM 606+++

Ponder was a taken aback by what she did next. She reached into the tubing, said "thank you", and patted the Fluffy Teddy Bear (FTB). He mentally panicked. Things went poorly when people touched the FTB. He'd tried to have it removed a couple of times, but Hex always shut down and refused to restart. Ponder had never been able to figure out where the bear had came from or what purpose it served, and Hex had been strangely silent about the entire thing.

To Ponder's surprise, the quill scribbled a heart.

Katarina pushed the bench back and stood up, grabbing her hat off the desk. She turned to Ponder and said, "he really is quite wonderful, Mister Stibbons."

"You touched the teddy bear," he said, slowly.

She arched one eyebrow. "Was I not supposed to? Seems to me that's what it's there for."

Ponder related the tale of the FTB to her on their way out the door, finishing with, "Hex has always shut down when we've tried to remove it."

She looked thoughtful. "I'd assumed it was a user interface. I read your paper on the continuous development of Hex's AI, and if it's true that Hex develops himself, and the bear appeared seemingly from nowhere, I'd imagine he thought a tactile interface would make him more… human."

"That's… very interesting," said Ponder lamely, wondering why he hadn't come up with the idea himself. The pair walked to the main building in silence.

"Well, Mister Stibbons," she said, stepping through the doorway and eyeing a small group of senior wizards gossiping in a corner. "It's been enlightening. I'm sure I'll see you around."

"Of course," he replied. "Miss Smith—"

"—Kat," she interrupted. "Please."

"Well. Let me know if you need—" he turned to face her after closing the door, but she had disappeared.


	3. Chapter 3

It was a handy trick; you just had to know where you were going or you never knew where you'd end up.

She knew it was rude to simply leave, but the awkward silence had been growing more uncomfortable by the minute. She had been able to see the gears working in Ponder's head, the way he'd kept shooting looks at her when he thought she wasn't paying attention.

The office was small, but she could fix that. A large, antiquated desk sat underneath the spacious window, flanked by a pair of decrepit bookcases. The rug spread over the stone floor was threadbare and fraying at the edges, and a thin layer of dust covered almost everything in the room. Her belongings had been brought up and stacked against the far wall.

Kat drew back the thin curtain that separated the office from the small living quarters, relieved to see that it was far less dusty. Removing her hat, she sank onto the bare mattress of the bed and stared out the much smaller window. _Curtains_, she thought vaguely.

Maybe she should've gone to Krull. The high-energy research opportunities were rubbish, but they didn't mind female wizards. Apparently. One could never be too sure about Krull.

In any case, she seemed to have survived the first day. The senior wizards, with the possible exclusion of Ponder Stibbons (who despite his post didn't seem quite old enough for the title) had given her the reception she'd expected—righteous indignation, thinly veiled with… well, actually, veiled with nothing. The assembly hadn't even made an effort to hide the fact they weren't happy with her appointment. She had at least expected a certain amount of tact from the faculty of the premier university of magic on the Disc, but she'd apparently expected too much.

She didn't understand why it mattered so much, either. Kat knew she was an occupational anomaly, but she also knew that she was damn good at what she did. Her confrontation with Ponder in the hallway had proved that, he'd read her papers and though she was male, which proved that her scholarship was just as good, if not better, than anything penned by a man.

It just… it would've been nice if they hadn't hated her immediately. Again with the exception of Ponder, who seemed to operate on an entirely different plane than the rest of the faculty, and maybe also with the exception of the Archchancellor, she hadn't seen a single friendly face in the Great Hall. She'd spoken with Ridcully at some length prior to her arrival, but she still wasn't sure if her hiring had anything more to do with the complicated relationship between the Archchancellor and Granny Weatherwax than it did with her actual talent. She'd considered asking about it, but it was impossible to wrangle any information out of Granny that she didn't want to give, and Kat had concluded that such tactics would get her nowhere.

Getting up off the mattress, she mentally scolded herself for being silly. It didn't really matter if the faculty liked her or not, she'd been hired, hadn't she? The paperwork was filed somewhere, signed and sealed. Oh, she supposed someone could try to off her—dead woman's pointy shoes—but she wasn't senior faculty (not yet, anyway) and thus was entirely unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Wizards generally didn't go for mindless killing, anyway; they only put in an effort when there was something in it for themselves. Besides that, Ridcully had all but put an end to the tradition, proving himself remarkably long-lived and almost offensively difficult to catch unawares.

She undid her belt and shrugged off her robe, revealing a set of plain clothes underneath. Her dusty old office wasn't going to unpack itself.

* * *

><p>Ponder didn't get the opportunity to see Kat again until the first week of classes, and even so, it was entirely by accident. He'd been on his way to somewhere else when he'd walked past the classroom and heard her lecture through the open door.<p>

Open doors were something of a rarity at the university, open doors leading into classrooms were even rarer. As a general rule, the faculty of UU didn't do much teaching, and the more senior wizards devoted large amounts of time to not holding classes. As far as Ponder could figure out, he was the only one who did any teaching, grading, paperwork, filing—really, anything at all. He was the only active member of at least twelve committees and the head of three academic departments.

In short, he was surprised to find someone else who did any work.

He sidled through the door, slipping into the back of the classroom. It was a rather large lecture hall, and he doubted she'd seen him enter, especially since she had he back turned to the seats. After a moment, Ponder became aware that there was something very _wrong_ about the classroom: namely, it was quiet.

There was no background noise, no hushed murmur of sound carrying the whispers and sniggers of adolescent boys. He strained his ears, but the only sounds were the scrape of chalk hitting the board, the scratch of pens on paper, and Kat's voice. Finally, a boy near the front of the room leaned across his desk to whisper something to the boy ahead of him. The two boys snickered quietly, and less than a second later the one who had made the joke jerked back in his seat, pressing a hand to his forehead.

"Ow!"

The other boy, the one who had laughed, went pale. Ponder couldn't tell from the back of the room, but he thought the boy was shivering.

Kat turned, slowly, and the collection of boys looked up from their notebooks. "I told you: you either talk amongst yourselves _or_ you pay attention. If you're not paying attention, you don't belong in this room."

With that, she turned back to the board. The hurried scratch of pens resumed, punctuated by the tap of the chalk. Kat wrote sigils as though she was attacking them.

There was an hourglass perched on the desk at the front of the room. The students attentively watched the last grain of sand drop into the bottom bulb.

Ponder had never witnessed such restraint. Boys positively vibrated with anxiety to get up and out of the classroom, but remained firmly attached to their seats. There was the click of chalk in the tray, and Kat turned to say, "you may go now". The boys were off like racehorses, tripping over each other to reach the door, as though they were fighting to get there first.

Once the flood of adolescent testosterone had abided, Ponder stood and made his way down the steps to the front of the room. "Miss Smith," he called with a tip of his hat. His aunts had said that's how you greet ladies…

She turned, and smiled. "Mister Stibbons! Pleasure to see you again." She began arranging a pile of papers and books on the desk, tucking the hourglass into a pocket. "I thought I asked you to call me Kat?"

"Kat. Er." Ponder coughed, nervously realizing that he hadn't actually thought of anything to say. "That was an… ah, interesting lecture. The part of it I heard, that is. The last part. Er."

She rolled her eyes, hoisting the pile into the crook of her arm. "I'm sure it's nothing you haven't heard before, Mister Stibbons."

"Ponder," he said, impulsively.

She eyed him. "Ponder," she repeated.

"Kat," he floundered, completely out of his depth.

She sighed. "You're doing the thing," she said.

"What, ah, thing?"  
>"Well," she began, "the <em>first<em> time you met me you didn't seem to care overmuch outside of realizing that I'd published some papers. But now you're doing the same thing everyone else is doing, which is realizing that, oh _gods_, I really am a woman and I really am a wizard and I really am teaching at this university, and now suddenly it's very _awkward_ for you, because you just can't get over how bloody _female_ I am." She spit out the last few words as though they were acid, and rolled her eyes again for good measure.

Ponder looked at the floor and then glanced back at Katarina. "Actually," he said, "you look a lot less female now than you did before."

She stared at him, completely offended, and Ponder faltered. "No! No, ah, no. That… that came out… wrong. Very wrong. What I mean was, er, that without the white and the hair and, ah, without all that, you seem more…"

Her eyebrows twitched, and, to his surprise, she laughed. "More traditional?"

"Yes," he settled. "More… traditional."

"So, Mister Stibbons—Ponder," she corrected. "Am I traditional enough now to pay another visit to Hex?"

"I wasn't aware the HEM was off-limits to you," he said.

"Well, I suppose it's not, really," she said, brushing past him on her way to the door. "I've actually been meaning to track you down, though. The HEM and I haven't been… let's say 'properly introduced'. I'm afraid that breaking something would be an awful way to make a first impression."

He hurried after her. "I can fix that. I can fix most things, actually," he added, muttering to himself.

"What's that?"

"Nothing."

"So… most things, eh?" She smiled. "Is that another reference to those 'many other responsibilities' you were telling me about?"

_Damn_, thought Ponder. "It might be," he said, attempting to shrug it off.

"Well, in any case—the HEM?" They were in the hallway now, boots echoing on the floor. It was interesting, Ponder noted, that she wore boots. He favored them over the more traditional pointy shoes, of course, because of the inherent dangers of working in the HEM-better to step in extra-dimensional muck while wearing thick soles. He dropped Kat's boots into the filing cabinet of his mind, labeled under "things to wonder about when bored later". Lots of things went into that particular cabinet; few of them ever came out. Ponder was rarely bored.

"How about this weekend?" He suggested.

She shrugged. "Saturday? Octeday?"

"Saturday?"

"Saturday."

They came to a split in the hall, and Ponder gestured off toward the left. "I was actually on my way to the Archchancellor's office, so…"

She smiled again. "So I'll see you on Saturday! G'day, Mister Stibbons." With that, she walked briskly away.


	4. Chapter 4

They saw each other again before Saturday.

Kat was sitting in the dining room, alone, a book in one hand and a fork in the other, halfheartedly picking at her food while she read. Ponder paused near the third cheese trolley, glanced around the room, and headed over.

"The librarian doesn't like it when food gets in the books."

She looked up at him, eyebrows raised. "The librarian does, however, like bananas," she replied.

"That's true," he said. "Mind if I sit down?"  
>She closed the book. "You really don't have to," she said.<p>

"What?"

She made a sort of odd little movement that Ponder supposed was a dismissive gesture. "I'm really not completely ostracized, absurdly lonely and desperate for company."

Just to be sure, Ponder took a quick look back at the empty seats. "Er," he said.

"And that _wasn't_ sarcasm," she added darkly.

"Can I sit down anyway?" he asked.

"Of course." She put the book down and patted the table across from her. He sat, feeling the eyes of the more senior wizards settling on his back. She took a bite of her food and chewed, staring at him expectantly.

Ponder realized that he had nothing to say. Aside from a few examples scholarly writing and a couple of brief, awkward conversations, he knew absolutely nothing about her.

Besides that, he'd never been good at talking to girls.

"You've never been good at talking to girls, have you, Mister Stibbons? Ponder, I mean." She said.

"Um, no," he admitted, wondering if it was really that obvious (apparently, it was).

"Well, Mister—Ponder, the first thing about talking to girls is that you don't just sit down and not say anything because they're girls and you don't know what they like to talk about. I know that you may find it hard to believe, but we are actually _people_."

"You're very… concise."

"I don't like to mince words. It's an awful habit," she waved a hand facetiously. "The world would be much improved if people would just say what they mean."

"Ah," Ponder countered, "but would it be as interesting?"

Privately, he thought, _gods bless you and your straightforward manner, Miss Smith_.

"A philosopher, are you?" She pointed the fork at him. "Be careful, Mister Stibbons."

He grinned. "Only natural philosophy, I assure you."

The joke earned him a delicate snort and a wave of the fork. The door of the hall opened, and she glanced up. "Oh! Here comes the rest of my company."

Ponder turned toward the door, intrigued. She'd said she was serious about _not _being lonely, but he'd thought it might've been to save face. He was proven wrong as a group of graduate students meandered toward the table. He recognized the three gangly, pale young men, but only vaguely: they hung around the HEM in the evenings and played dice in what passed for the lounge.

"Professor Smith, Professor Stibbons," said the tallest one, sliding into the seat next to Ponder. The other two sat across the table, turning the chairs slightly inward.

Kat looked at Ponder smugly and raised an eyebrow, a gesture that was clearly meant to say _I told you so_.

"So, boys," she said. "What did you find out?"

The smallest one cleared his throat nervously. "Well, Professor, an eight-sided die thrown eight times is equally likely to come up as any number one through eight each time, right?"

She smiled. "Go on."

"But… it never came up as one and it never came up as eight until we threw it twenty-three times."

"And what have we learned from this little lesson?"

The third student muttered something that sounded like, "that Billy cheats at dice". The tallest student said, loudly, "that probability is bunk."

"Not bunk," she said, "just improbable. And _why_ is that?"

"The Disc's magical field," they chanted in unison.

"And so _what_ are you going to do?"

They were silent.

"You're not going to play dice against Billy, that's what. Think on that for awhile." She pushed the book across the table, placing it in front of the tall boy. "This might help."

"Thanks, Professor Smith," he said, pushing it into an already-bulging satchel. There was an irritating, high-pitched scrape as the three pushed their chairs back from the table. "We'll see you tomorrow."

She gave them a little wave before turning back to Ponder.

"They're a bit daft," she admitted, "but they're the only people in this building who aren't completely fixated on my gender."

"I'm not," said Ponder.

"Sure you aren't," she laughed. "When was that last time you talked to a girl, Ponder?"

He thought about it. "There are girls on the staff. Housekeeping."

She shook her head. "Girls who are _not_ university staff."

Certain things ran through Ponder's head, namely that the last girl he talked to who wasn't university staff was probably Death's granddaughter. He opted for a simple, "I don't know."

Kat grinned. Ponder thought she looked slightly deranged. "Probably when your buddies snuck you out at night as an undergraduate."

He tried his best to look hurt. "Never."

"Oh, come off it. Then again, we are talking about _you_. You were probably locked up in your room with half the contents of the library."

He sighed. "I'll have you know I was an exceptionally lazy undergraduate."

She leaned across the table, her eyes wide. "Noooooo."

He nodded. "It's true. I only passed my exams by luck."

"The great Ponder Stibbons barely passed his exams?"

"Oh no," he said. "I passed with flying colors, actually." He proceeded to explain about his roommate, Victor, who'd gotten caught up in the fiasco with the moving pictures, and how he'd accidentally wound up with Victor's fixed exam. "It only had one question, and that was the blank for my name."

"Well, I hope you got it right."

He laughed. "I did, obviously."

"I'd hate to think you're not really as smart as your reputation leads me to believe." She shook her arm, revealing a slim silver watch on her wrist. "Look at that. I have to get going. I'm sorry, seems like I'm always running away from you. Promise I'm not." She gave him a wink.

The wink unnerved him, and he wasn't quite sure what to make of her comment. Clearing his throat, he said, "I'll see you Saturday, then."


	5. Chapter 5

"...and that," Ponder gestured to the door set into the far wall, "is my office."

"You take a great deal of pride in it, obviously," she said, sipping at her coffee.

They were seated on the faded sofa that some students had rescued from the university's garbage pile years ago and brought into the HEM. Kat, in her typically unladylike manner, had her feet balanced on the low edge of the accent table, which had also been salvaged from the garbage. Most of the furniture in the HEM had been taken from someplace else, in the era before Ponder had re-balanced the university budget. The tour hadn't taken long; it had been less than twenty minutes before Ponder had realized there was little he needed to explain in the way of actual mechanics and an event that would have normally lasted most of the day had been over by the afternoon. Better yet, he seemed to have finally arrived at the conclusion that talking to girl didn't require a special set of rules.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

She fiddled with the mug, concentrating her gaze on a chip in the ceramic. She hadn't really meant to say it out loud, but the words had leapt straight from her brain to her mouth without pausing to filter through her sense.

"Just an observation. You can't be much more than thirty, but you're the head of _the_ only HEM program that really matters. Not only that, you're the head of the department because you're the pretty much the one who _invented_ the department."

Ponder seemed to consider that for a moment before replying, "but I'm not the one who invented HEM. If I recall correctly, there were a pair of wizards who did _that_ a good twenty years earlier..."

She sighed.

"...and their daughter decided to ship herself off to Bugarup and effectively hide from the rest of the world."

Panic swelled. Ponder's interest had been piqued, she could feel his eyes on her as he waited for a response. She reddened slightly and wrapped her hands tighter around the chipped mug, picking at a lump of glaze with her thumbnail. Despite academic curiosity being the most likely source of the question—this was Ponder Stibbons, after all—the question was too personal and decided she didn't have to answer it. Swallowing hard, she willed her face to return to a normal color.

"That," she said, risking a sidelong glance at Ponder, "is a can of worms you should _not_ open up."

It was Ponder's turn to flush, and she had to tamp down the urge to smile triumphantly, returning her attention to the cracked glaze on the mug. There was, she acknowledged, a part of her that was quite flattered in Ponder's interest, but there was a much larger part that wanted him to mind his own business. Kat wasn't interested in giving away secrets, especially not if they meant having to pack up and move again...

"I've been to Fourecks, you know," he said, toying with the cuff of his robe.

She didn't. "No. For what?"

He looked uncomfortable. "Do you remember the day Ridcully assigned me to help you find your office, when I said there are very few things that could scare me now?"

She nodded. He glanced at her, their eyes meeting. "Fourecks is one of the reasons why."

She wanted to make a joke, something about spiders or snakes, maybe even about kangaroos, but something in Ponder's face stopped her. He'd suddenly taken on the rundown appearance of a man who knows something he'd much rather forget.

Words skipped over her common sense again. "You're very odd."  
>Ponder's expression snapped from troubled to insulted as she fought to recover from that statement. "No! I meant... I... <em>shite<em>." She pressed the mug to her forehead, hoping the warm touch of the ceramic would clear her head. "You're much different in real life than you are in your papers."

"I'm not the one who left my name off so people would think I was male."

Kat lifted the mug away from her head and carefully leaned forward to place it on the table. Her pulse had quickened when he'd mentioned Fourecks, and she could still feel her heart thumping against her chest. Her comment had been stupid—of course Ponder had a life outside of academia—but it was certainly true that she'd intentionally omitted her first name from her papers. "Could you blame me? It was necessary."

"Necessary?"

"Ponder," she sighed. "No one would read those papers if I'd left my name on." She didn't add the other reason why she'd left it off—outside of the faculty at Bugarup and a few people in the villages of Lancre, no one knew about the Disc's second female wizard. Moving to Ankh-Morpork had been risky in and of itself; Ridcully had assured her that, since the wizards almost never actually left the university, she should be relatively invisible to the population at large. Coming out to a scholastic circle was bad enough, she wasn't sure she could handle coming out to the world.

* * *

><p>Later that day, after she'd left the HEM and Ponder Stibbons behind, Katarina Smith sat at her desk and had a cry.<p>

Ponder had been correct when he'd accused her of hiding from the rest of the world in Bugarup. Although her parents technically owned a house in the village of Bad Ass, they hadn't wanted to give up traveling. Her mother taught her the basics when she'd started showing signs of ability, but her father thought she should get a more traditional education. There'd been a fight.

There had also been hurried correspondence with Bill Rincewind, and a lot of business with maps and hourglasses and heavy books. All of it had finally cumulated into her acceptance at Bugarup University six years before she had technically been born. She was both fourteen and twenty-two when she graduated; she figured she was now probably about twenty-seven, or maybe forty.

Wiping her eyes, Kat drummed her fingertips on her cheekbones. Perhaps not forty, her skin was decent and she didn't quite look old enough. Twenty-seven, then, definitely.

_Normal people know their age_, she thought.

Her eyes fell to the stack of paper on the edge of the desk. It contained midterm papers from one hundred and seventy three adolescent boys of varying intellectual promise. One hundred and seventy three young men who had blindly accepted that they'd be attending a university with hundreds of other young men, and who all expected that in ten years or so, they would have all learned how to be old men. Women would never factor into the equation at all... until now.

Wizards were, she mused, traditionally celibate. There were some that took it more seriously than others, of course, but only a madman would ignore it entirely. A wizard could be naturally gifted—rare, but it did happen—he could inherit a dying wizard's power—also rare—or, of course, he could be the eighth son of an eighth son. The heap of paper on her desk represented, probably, one hundred and seventy three eighth sons.

Her thoughts turned in the other direction. Village women in the hills of Lancre generally married between the ages of eighteen and twenty. Children were expected within the first two years or so. The only woman Kat knew of who had blatantly ignored that formula was Granny Weatherwax.

She drummed her fingertips on the battered wooden desktop. Normal people knew exactly how old they were, down the day. Normal people were either celibate wizards or married women with a gaggle of children. Normal people didn't go skulking about, hiding their unfortunate celebrity from angry mobs whose minds had forever wedded female wizards with creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions.

Her concentration faltered as her fingernail hooked on a splinter in the wood.

"Damnit."


	6. Chapter 6

AUTHOR'S NOTE: A chapter in which Ponder crumples up some paper, and our beloved girl-wizard has a quarter-life crisis. Things are starting to move forwad... also, thanks to reviewer Discosuperfly, who has been giving me the warm fuzzies about PondKat recently. :D

* * *

><p>A combination of warm weather, clear skies and the end of midterm exams had lead to a quiet day in the HEM building. With a satisfied sigh, Ponder slid the last graded essay into one of many filing folders spread out across his desk. He'd broken five pens, ran out of red ink twice, and lost a bet with Adrian, but the papers were done. The sun blazed through the window above the futon he'd placed against the windowed wall. He reckoned that he'd earned a nap, but he'd much rather take it in a proper bed. Having decided that he had most <em>definitely<em> earned a nap, he pushed back from the desk and strode quickly to the door.

The HEM was deserted, silent except for the slow shifting of ants through Hex's tubes and the distant hum of the bees. Ponder absentmindedly trailed his fingertips across the edge of the table as he walked past, stopping when they encountered a wet blotch of ink.

Someone had left a sheet of paper tucked partly underneath the keyboard. He tugged it out, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose with the other hand before bringing it to his face. His fingers had smudged the final column, but it had apparently been filled with numbers. They weren't in any sort of order—at least, not in any order that Ponder could make out, and he could identify a lot. "Twenty-eight" had been scribbled at the end, and circled.

Shrugging, Ponder crumpled the paper into a ball. He tossed it into the bin on his way out the door.

* * *

><p>Twenty-<em>eight<em>. She'd been off by a year.

It was a warm autumnal afternoon, and Kat was sitting in the sun, feeling pleasantly bored. She'd made the happy discovery that she wasn't the _only_ friendless wizard in the university and thus had spent the day forging a sacrosanct bond of camaraderie with Doctor Hix. He'd cornered her in the hallway outside her office, brandishing a fistful of flyers and twittering about community theatre. His blatant enthusiasm at her acceptance of a flyer was infectious, and she'd been able to talk him into sneaking a beer out from the university kitchens.

He'd laughed. "Skull ring, m'dear. I don't need to be talked into anything."

She draped an arm over the back of her bench and surveyed the university green. A few clumps of students puttered about in the distance, but Kat knew that most of the student body would be busy slipping over the back wall and into the city pubs today. The two-week exam period had pushed both students and professors to their breaking point, and everyone wanted to shove off for a bit and have a drink. She'd brought a book out with her, but it was mostly something to look at while her mind worked at something else.

She had two friends now, if she could count Ponder as a friend and not a colleague. She supposed the Librarian might not hold much interest in her gender, but as she couldn't understand anything he said, friendship was mostly impossible. Even then...

She dropped her eyes back to the book and mentally compiled her knowledge about the real-life Ponder Stibbons. Presumably, something unfortunate had happened to him in Fourecks and hence he claimed to not be afraid of much. He was head of three departments and was single-handedly the majority of the university steering committee, and he took his work seriously, perhaps overly so. She skipped over the interaction she'd had with him—snippets of conversation, the exchange of books, a cup of coffee while performing maintenance on Hex. They'd had a brief argument over whether or not one of the third-year students deserved to enroll in Kat's seminar class. It wasn't much to go on, and she was forced to determine that the real Ponder Stibbons was, actually, a very boring man.

Then again, what was she?

Kat briefly checked off a list of her own accomplishments. Doctoral degree? Check. Scads of publishing? Check. Teaching appointment? Check. She frowned as she inattentively flipped two the next page of the book. She didn't have much of a family—her parents, of course, wherever they were gallivanting off to now, some uncles, and Granny—she had _maybe_ two friends, and her main talent was being able to chatter about elasticated string theory for longer than anyone else could maintain interest.

So she was smart, but uninteresting. She briefly considered her looks, but didn't come up with much there, either. She was neither tall nor short, her hair was a nice color but otherwise unremarkable, and she almost never actually _wore_ her pointy hat because she looked silly in it. Her figure was nice enough, but it wasn't outstanding—she self-consciously ran a hand over her stomach, to make sure.

Kat was forced to admit that she was boring, too.

She vaguely recalled her parents taking her to Fourecks, an event that took place twenty and thirty-two years before her arrival in Ankh-Morpork. Memories skipped across her mind, culminating in one thought: despite having all the time in the world, she'd never had time to do anything _else_. In spite of spending most of her life surrounded by men, they'd never factored into the equation that was Katarina Smith. She'd never thought about having children. To think about children, one needs to think about husbands, and wizards do not think about husbands. She'd concentrated on the reproductive habits of ants and bees while other girls were at the pubs, studying boys.

Twenty-eight suddenly seemed ancient. She flipped another page in the book, staring into the margins as the invisible weight of age settled heavily on her shoulders. It wasn't even that she'd given it all up; it was that she hadn't even thought about it—the thought of doing anything else had never crossed her mind. _It might have been nice_, she reflected, sadly.

She pushed her shoulders into the back of the bench and glanced up at the sky before skimming the pages of the book, looking for sigils. Finding a page that she could pretend to study for a while, her thoughts turned back inward to ponder the delightfully juvenile question of what her imaginary husband would be like. He'd have to be attractive, she decided, but not classically attractive and definitely not overly so, as she wasn't pretty enough to compete for attention. He'd have to like books, too, and it would be an advantage if he had a house large enough to store all of hers—Kat had ran out of room on her office bookshelves and she'd had to start stacking them on the floor. She floundered for another qualification, but found none. A curious sensation of guilt came over her as she realized that all the depths of her imagination had come up with was a passably good-looking, well-read and undoubtedly boring man.

Kat pursed her lips as her thoughts came full circle. Ponder Stibbons was most definitely a boring man—and suddenly, the weight of age turned into a dull ache spread across her chest. He _was_ a boring man, but he was also passably attractive and extraordinarily well read. She fingered the dog-eared page of the book and swallowed hard, willing the sudden ache to go away.

A terrible thought crossed her mind, and she flipped through the book madly. Examining the inside cover, her heart dropped into her stomach as the realized the neatly printed name in the corner was not her own. Dear gods, she was going to back to give it _back_ to him at some point—and now that she'd thought of Ponder as attractive, the notion wouldn't go away. Forcing herself to inhale fully, she breathed a sigh and squared her shoulders, reminding herself that she was too old for nonsense and a wizard besides.

Tucking the book into the crook of her arm, Kat stood and set off toward her office.


	7. Chapter 7

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Short chapter, sorry. Things are beginning to get to the tricky bit, plus I had to take a little hiatus in order to get my final exams out of the way. The next chapter will likely be longer and more interesting.

* * *

><p>She'd been avoiding him.<p>

It had taken Ponder an embarrassingly long time to figure out, but realization had arrived along with the insipid little note on his desk, tucked inside a book he'd lent her weeks ago. He surveyed the text again, penned in a cautious hand and containing, very carefully, absolutely nothing of substance.

He frowned, remembering Kat's scribbled sigils on the blackboard. Someone who scrawled thaumic signatures with such indifference would not, he surmised, sit down to write senseless letters with perfectly rounded "o"s. Ponder wasn't entirely sure why it bothered him, but the note had been nagging at the back of his since the book's appearance that morning. He'd walked into the HEM to find it resting on the corner of his desk—a suspicious location, as he vigilantly locked his office door each night.

She had been questionably absent from the HEM—if she'd been using the facility at all, it was when Ponder wasn't there—and he hadn't seen her in the dining hall. He'd interrupted her students' dice game—he was no longer sure if it was a game or schoolwork, not that it mattered—to inquire after her, but they didn't seem to be aware of any problems. The entire business had gone on too long to be coincidental, and the arrival of the note had caused Ponder to become suddenly and somewhat painfully aware of her disappearance.

It would be ludicrous to say that he _missed_ her. He hadn't known her long enough to miss her, and besides, she hadn't actually gone anywhere. It must be, he supposed, that he wasn't used to being avoided. His students were, for the most part, clever enough that his presence didn't trouble them, and Ponder went out of his way to escape attention from Ridcully, not the other way around. Yes, it was definitely that he wasn't used to being evaded—or maybe it was that he'd rather enjoyed her company, in which case he _was_ missing her.

It was a small thing, really. He'd quite liked the ability to have a conversation with Kat that didn't involve stopping himself every few minutes to explain long words or bits of theory. She'd never given him the blank stare he was used to seeing on the face of undergraduate students or the confused yet furious glare of the senior wizards. If anything, she'd simply roll her eyes or make some other overdramatic gesture when she thought he was being an idiot. That was the other thing, his original cohort had graduated and scattered. He caught names published here and there—Adrian's more than he'd like to admit—and there were letters and things, but there was no one around to point out when he was being stupid.

He looked back down at the note, mentally cursing the neat lines of perfect letters before tucking it back into the cover of the book. The late afternoon sun shone through the open window, and Ponder guessed there were a few hours yet before dinner. It was the perfect time, in fact, for afternoon classes...

* * *

><p>There was a similar note tacked to the door, except the handwriting was nowhere near as neat.<p>

_Professor Smith's class has been cancelled today_. No reason given as to why. Ponder wrinkled his nose slightly, surprisingly irritated to see that the "o"s pinned to the door were lopsided circles that didn't quite close. Dotting of the "i" took place over the "m". The crosses of the "t"s were not level, and the period seemed to have been an afterthought.

It was, in short, everything that his note was not.

He turned away from the door and meandered slowly down the hallway, resigning himself to yet another dinner with Ridcully shouting in his ear. It was early, but the sooner Ponder arrived at the dining hall, the sooner he could escape the Archchancellor's booming voice.

There was a small lounge at the end of the hallway, containing a couple of tables and a coffeepot. Ponder had, in some vague way, been aware of its existence for some time, but he had never ventured in. He'd never actually seen anyone use it, actually. That was how most of the University operated—you knew things were there, but you never actually saw them, used them, _recognized_ them until some unknown force compelled you to need them.

Unknown forces were acting now, the sound of pouring coffee emanating from the open door. Not thinking much of it, he had almost walked past the room before Ponder caught a shock of red out of the corner of his eye.

She was leaning against the counter, back to the door, mug in one hand.

"Miss Smith," he said casually, noting the tensing of her shoulders as he walked into the lounge. She turned slowly, apparently out of regard for the cup of hot liquid she was holding, teeth worrying her bottom lip.

"Mister Stibbons."

The strange quiver in Kat's voice matched the subtle shakiness in her hands. She looked... tired, exhausted even, the shadows under her eyes underscored by an uncharacteristic paleness in her face.

Ponder frowned. "Are you ill?"

"No," she replied, managing a small smile. "I just stayed up a bit late, that's all. I'm tired." She brought her free hand underneath the mug, trying to steady it.

He relaxed slightly. "Looks like more than a 'bit late', if you ask me."

"I didn't," she snapped, wincing slightly as the coffee sloshed over the edge of the cup, onto her fingers. Realizing the look of shock on Ponder's face, she mumbled an apology. "I'm just tired. That's all, really. Sorry."

"That's, er... that's fine," he said, shifting uneasily and looking, very intently, at the floor. "I haven't seen you around recently."

Absentmindedly wiping her fingers on her robe, Kat's gaze dropped to the countertop. "I've been... um, busy. Sorry. Again."

"It's alright."

There was a long, pregnant pause, during which they very carefully avoided looking at one another.

"D'you need help with anything?" Ponder mumbled, examining the cracks in the tile.

"No," she whispered, "it's okay. Really." She stopped and cleared her through before continuing, "I just fell a... um, a little behind, with midterms. I'll catch up."

He didn't now how he was supposed to respond. "Ah. Good luck."

"Thanks."

"I should be going," he said, shuffling back towards the door.

"Yeah."

"Um, thank you for returning the book," he said. Mentally, he added,_ though I'm not quite sure how you got it into my office..."_

She flushed slightly, toying with the coffee mug. "You're welcome. Thanks for lending it to me, anyway."

He paused in the doorway, looking back over his shoulder to where Kat was busily examining the rim of the mug. "Anytime. I, er, don't have many friends to lend things to. I'll, uh, see you around, I guess." With that, Ponder hurriedly left the room.

Halfway down the hall, he suddenly turned back, intending to ask if she was going to dinner. The door was still open, but with the exception of the steaming mug on the counter, the lounge was empty.


	8. Chapter 8

Several days later, after the flood of teenage testosterone had subsided from the classroom, Katarina Smith stuffed the silver hourglass into her pocket and sighed heavily. She knew that she should be proud of her students—surprisingly few of them had any difficulty with the material and none of them were failing—but she wished, not for the first time, that they displayed any sort of enthusiasm at all. Her graduate students were fervent about their studies, and making good progress, but the undergraduate boys were beginning to try her patience with their apathy. However, even after a few weeks of... erratic... class scheduling, they were doing well, and she was pleased despite the slight irritation.

She'd begun to work Ponder back into her schedule after their encounter in the lounge, the memory of which made her cringe. Kat prided herself on _not_ being awkward despite having every reason in life to be, and she'd made a right mess of things in attempting to avoid Ponder. How she'd ever hoped to avoid a man who was, for all intents and purposes, her boss, was now beyond her imagination. Chalking it up to a rare bout of severe irrationality, inspired by frankly _juvenile_ embarrassment, she'd resolved not to do it again.

Ducking behind the moveable chalkboard, she blushed at the memory. He'd called her his _friend_, which-despite weeks of mental chastisement—caused her heart to beat several times quicker. In the wake of her self-imposed exile from Ponder Stibbons, she'd taken to allowing herself these little moments, in an effort to make sure they didn't happen when the aforementioned Stibbons was actually present.

Kat had read plenty of books, and—another embarrassment—those books had recently included what might be a suspicious number of cheap romances. She had, rather accidentally, discovered that the Librarian also shared a fondness for them and, for a bunch of bananas a week, they'd made an arrangement with a local bookseller. It was better if she thought of the brown paper parcels that discretely appeared in the library every other week as _research_—and, applying that research, she'd concluded that it was perfectly okay for her to harbor a slight crush on Ponder _if nobody knew about it_.

Especially him.

There were sounds from the other side of the blackboard, forcing Kat back into some semblance of professional composure. She smoothed her hands down the front of her robe and stalked around the board to find her trio of graduate students milling around the table.

"Boys."

They turned toward her. She genuinely liked her graduate students, and her recent rumination on the rest of her students only made her appreciate them more. The tall one, Billy, was bright on paper but lacking in sense, while the small one, Jakob, was all sense but little intelligence. The third, Taj, was entirely deficient of any defining physical characteristics, but made up for it with a wicked sense of humor and a penchant for sarcasm. She strongly suspected that any one of them would be unable to operate without the other two.

"Hi, Professor Smith," said Billy.

"What've you got for me?"

Taj offered up a thick stack of paper, bound on one side. "We did the experiment ourselves before having HEX simulate it. There were only slight differences, like we expected... within the acceptable limits."

"Good," she replied, accepting the makeshift book and flipping through the pages. "I'll look this over and get it back to you in a week or so. Any questions?"

The boys collectively shook their heads, and then Jakob cleared his throat. "Are you doing anything for Hogswatch?"

"Hogswatch?" She asked. "It's a bit early to be thinking about Hogswatch, don't you think?"

"It's next month," replied Taj.

"Huh," she said, still leafing through the heavy manuscript. "No, no real plans."

"...only Billy's mum wants you to come to dinner."

She stopped examining the book and looked at Billy. "Does she."

Billy's face turned an exceptional shade of fuchsia. "Yes'm," he muttered, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.

"I don't think that would be very professional," she murmured, turning back to the paper. "But do give my regards to your mother, Billy."

* * *

><p>"...and that's when I was informed that, apparently, Billy's mother has invited me for Hogswatch dinner."<p>

This was accompanied by Kat viciously stabbing her fork into her salad before waving it over the plate for emphasis. "I mean, what's with that?"

Ponder swallowed thoughtfully. The dining hall was almost empty—Kat had agreed to dinner if and _only if _it happened at a time when the majority of the senior wizards would not be present. "The students must like you."

"You know what I think?" She rolled her eyes and waved the fork again, not waiting for him to reply. "I think they think I don't have plans."

"You've just said that you _don't_ have plans."

"I _could_ have plans," she said, popping the forkful of salad into her mouth.

"But you don't. Are you just staying on here?"  
>She chewed and watched him idly shove vegetables around his plate while trying to decide how to respond. It was an innocuous question, and she doubted he'd meant anything by it, but her inner child was clapping its hands and squealing with delight. Fighting the urge have another blushing moment, she swallowed purposefully and said, "Yeah, probably. I've got to proofread the trio's thesis draft."<p>

"Trio?"

She laughed, "yes, the trio-Billy and his friends. I don't think they're capable of doing anything individually."

That earned her a smile from Ponder, and something in her gut clenched, making it momentarily hard to breathe. Feeling the heat flush onto her face, she knew she was fighting a losing battle.

He was looking at her in surprise now, and she pretended to cough in an attempt to explain away the sudden color in her cheeks, completing the theatrics by consuming most of her glass of water.

"Sorry," she said, "swallowed wrong."

Ponder seemed to accept that, although it had been very clear that she'd successfully swallowed and spoken well before the coughing had started. "Anyway," he continued, "I'm glad you're staying."

Kat's subconscious was now determined to see everything Ponder said as flirtation. Her inner child was turning somersaults.

He let loose a small laugh. "The Archchancellor seems to like you. Maybe he'll pick on you instead of me this time."  
><em>Ridcully isn't the one I want to like me<em>. Thankfully, Kat's efforts to put a stop to her runaway imagination seemed to be working again, and she was able to keep the thought from being vocalized. "The Archchancellor is a very... interesting man," she mumbled instead.

"_Interesting_ is only one of the many words I'd use," muttered Ponder. "Gods, this feels dangerous."

_Dangerous?_ Kat's head snapped up. "What?"

Ponder grinned mischievously; she had a sudden urge to run from the room, screaming. "I've never had the opportunity to complain about the Archchancellor."

She blinked. "Why would you?"  
>He looked at her over the top of his glasses, tapping his fork against the side of his plate. "Really?"<br>"Really," she whispered, trying not to think of Ponder with his glasses off.

Leaning back in his chair, Ponder directed his eyes toward the ceiling before he answered. "Kat, did you ever stop to wonder _how_ I got to be a one-man steering committee?"

The insufferable brat who was Katarina's inner child was applauding madly at the mention of her name. "Not really."

He sighed. "It's less that I actually wanted to do any of it and more that the Archchancellor didn't want to. He'd already driven the Bursar half-mad by the time I made it onto the faculty and no one else was picking up the slack. So I started checking over the Bursar's ledgers, which turned into doing them myself because the poor man couldn't handle the numbers anymore, even with the frog pills. That led to having to re-do the University budget, to which I had to answer to the steering committee, but there hadn't _been_ a steering committee for years... I'm the only one that _cares_."

When she didn't answer, he continued, "Sometimes, at night, I wake up and have these horrifying moments of clarity where I realize that nothing in this University will ever make sense."

Part of her became immediately occupied with the thought of Ponder in the middle of the night, but the rational, sensible part of Kat—the larger part, or so she hoped—tamped down the rising color in her cheeks and asked, "Why don't you appoint anyone else to the committee?"

"I tried. I'm the only one who shows up to meetings, or pays attention to the notices, or, for that matter, _hangs_ the notices. I'm the only wizard in this institution who isn't entirely averse to doing any work. Present company excluded," he added.

"Well," she replied, swallowing hard and struggling not to cough for real, "I am, ah, very glad to be your partner in crime, Mister Stibbons."

_Understatement. Understatement. Understatement_.

Raising an eyebrow, he lifted his glass and tipped it towards her. "Cheers."

She grasped her own glass and tapped it lightly against his, looking very carefully at his left shoulder.

"Cheers, mate."


	9. Chapter 9

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Hey guys! Sorry for the four-month delay; I actually got busy this summer writing a _novel_. You can find more details about that on my Tumblr (same username as ). Here's a short update, picking up largely where we left off...

* * *

><p>Time passed, slowly at first—and then all at once, abruptly halting with the sharp click of pencils being laid down as the last grain of sand dropped into the bottom of Kat's hourglass. The term was over. Silence gave way to assorted mumblings of relief and second-guesses.<p>

Ponder leaned back in the chair as the students filed leisurely past the desk, delivering their papers until a mess of completed exams occupied the corner. He had offered to proctor Kat's last exam so that she could meet with the graduate students before they left for the break, a proposal that she had seemed inexplicably glad to accept. Watching the last of the boys exit the room, he stood, pocketing the hourglass before shuffling the papers into a more cohesive pile, which he tucked into a plain folder. Slipping the folder underneath one arm, he headed for the HEM.

On the way there, his thoughts turned to Katarina Smith. She'd been oddly excitable lately, something he chalked up to the success of the trio's research on narrative causality. The three of them were actually rather brilliant-he'd double-checked their reports, and fully agreed with Kat's opinion that they should start experimentation after returning the holiday.

The HEM seemed deserted, the main room empty and silent, but the smell of coffee was strong enough to lure him into the lounge. He stopped just outside of the doorway, startled to see that Kat was already there, standing in front of the window. She was squinting at her reflection in the glass, mouth pursed in concentration while attempting to re-pin her hair at the back of her head.

She was, he thought, rather pretty-not that it mattered, because he wasn't interested in that sort of thing. He filed the thought away in his mental cabinet of things to never think about again.

He wondered if he should clear his throat or something as he entered, to let her know that he was there, but instead he tripped on the doorframe and dropped the folder.

The loud thud of heavy paper coming into contact with the floor startled her. Kat spun, quickly, dropping a pin as her hair fell from the bun she'd been constructing at the back of her head. "Mis—Ponder!"

"Er," he began. "Hi. Sorry."

"Um," she said. "Hi."

He watched as she quickly ran a hand through her hair, untangling the knots that had formed while she was trying to pin it up. Smiling nervously, she approached the door. "Are those my exams?"

"Yes," he answered, picking the folder up from the floor. "Sorry I've dropped them."

"I don't think you've hurt them."

Their hands brushed as she took the folder from him; Ponder was surprised by the warmth of her skin. Noting the faint blush across her cheeks, he asked, "You're not ill, are you?"

"No!" She replied, snatching the folder away. "Sorry. No. I'm fine. I'm just... excited, is all. The, uh, the trio is very... smart." She looked down at the folder, her nose wrinkling slightly. "I'd much rather grade them all over again than read all of these."

He laughed. "For what it's worth, Ridcully won't notice if you don't grade them."

She arched one eyebrow at him, her expression cool even though her cheeks were still flushed. "But you will."

With what he hoped was a mischievous grin, he asked, "What am I going to do if you don't turn them in? Fire you?"  
>"I'm the only professor you've <em>got<em>."

"My point exactly," he replied.

"Riiiiiight," she said, drawing the word out. "Oh, before I forget—hourglass." She held out one hand, palm up, waiting.

"Yes," he murmured, digging it out of his pocket. A thought occurred him as he placed it in her expectant palm, keeping his fingers on the silver longer than he had to. She wasn't thinking, her digits instinctively closing around his hand.

He didn't know exactly why he hadn't let go of the hourglass. It was still warm from being in his pocket, a soft flush of heat against his fingers, but Kat's hand was warmer still, and softer. The strange combination of metal, glass and flesh against his skin felt—

"Ponder."

She was staring at him, brown eyes wide and wary, her lips slightly parted.

"Sorry," he muttered, wrenching his hand free of her fingers.

"S'alright," she whispered, transferring the hourglass to her own pocket.

"D'you'wannaget dinner?" He asked, the words running together in an effort to escape the awkward situation he'd created.

He watched as she swallowed, withdrawing her hand from her pocket, her fingers curling around the edge of her sleeve.

"Sure."

"Okay."

They stood there, next to the doorway, unmoving.

"You first," Ponder suggested, weakly.

Her eyes flicked between him and door. "You're in the way."

Stepping aside, he very carefully looked at the ceiling as she walked past him, fingers still clutching her sleeve.

* * *

><p>Much later, Kat stood in the bathroom attached to her office, dripping water onto the floor as she examined herself in the mirror. Her chin was a bit weak, she thought, and her nose a little sharp, but it wasn't <em>bad<em>. The tan and freckles that had appeared with the Fourecksian sun had faded considerably, the mirror presenting her with a much paler image than she was used to seeing. The effect wasn't unbecoming, but she preferred the tan. Perhaps she'd go back to Fourecks for Hogswatch after all...

With a sigh, she shrugged on her bathrobe, wrapping a towel around her dripping hair. She was grateful the University had been able to afford her an office with a real bathroom, with pipes, largely uninterrupted by magic and meddling. Then again, she thought, you couldn't have a woman making the trip down the hall to the standard, shared bathroom, could you? It wouldn't be _appropriate._ She might get _ideas_!

Trudging across the office, she slipped through the curtain to her bedroom and flung herself onto the bed. Staring up at the ceiling, Kat wondered what the university officials would do if they found out she already _had_ ideas.

She had plenty of ideas, for example, about Ponder Stibbons, none of which were appropriate in any way, shape, or form. The Librarian's romance selections had taken a turn for the racier as of late, and despite some heavy blushing and occasionally having to bite her lip while she read, Kat had pressed on, determined to finish every page.

There would be no time for romance novels now-she had to grade the stack of exams sitting on her desk. The trio had left behind a heavy notebook documenting their findings; she had to look through it before they returned from holiday, before they could officially begin practical experimentation. She didn't want to do any of it. There was still one book lying unread in the bag thrown casually under her desk, hidden in plain sight to avoid the prying eyes of housekeeping.

Studying the cracks in the plaster, Kat thought about that afternoon, when Ponder had given back her hourglass. She mostly thought about his hands, which she'd been secretly observing for the past week anyway, stout, callused fingers with short-clipped nails, always busy. He hadn't removed his hand. Why? It had been too definite a gesture to be an accident.

It wasn't as though she could complain, though—the memory made her heart flutter against a squeeze of tightness in her chest. She smiled. His hands had been warm, the feel of his skin so different from her own. It had been nice to make contact, if only for a second—to feel as though she wasn't so damnably separate from everyone else in the University. Aside from jostling in the hallway—during which she was generally avoided, anyway—and accidental brushes of hands during mail delivery—which didn't happen often—nobody seemed to _connect_.

Was she lonely? She was used to being different, but being different, being separate, was different from being _alone_. Maybe that was the reason for her embarrassing preoccupation with Ponder Stibbons, that he didn't seem inclined to leave her alone, that he recognized her as something more than a woman. Kat was a scholar, an academic, a researcher—she was smart, capable, well read, just as much so than any other wizard, even if she was female. She would rather be a scholar than a woman, anyway—although the women in the Librarian's books seemed to be happy being women, and not much else. Frowning, she flipped herself over on the bed, burying her face into the pillows, contemplating the impossible.

Could she be both?


End file.
